A container or wrapper format is a file format, or often a stream format (the stream need not be stored as a file) whose specifications describe only the way data is stored (but not coded) within the file, and how much metadata could be, or is effectively stored. No specific codification of the data itself is implied or specified. A wrapper format is in fact, a meta-format, because it stores the data itself, and the information about how it is st...
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A container or wrapper format is a file format, or often a stream format (the stream need not be stored as a file) whose specifications describe only the way data is stored (but not coded) within the file, and how much metadata could be, or is effectively stored. No specific codification of the data itself is implied or specified. A wrapper format is in fact, a meta-format, because it stores the data itself, and the information about how it is stored. A program which is able to correctly identify and open a file (read a stream) written in such a format might not be able to decode the actual data stored within, either because the metadata in the wrapper file is not sufficient or the software lacks the specific decoding algorithm required. Stated like that, a container format could, in theory, wrap any kind of data. Although there exist a few examples of such file formats (Microsoft Windows' DLL files are just an implicit one), most wrappers exist for particular data groups. This is due...
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